


Our Father

by Fishielicious



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Deadbeat Dad, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-11 19:49:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fishielicious/pseuds/Fishielicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fíli and Kíli miss their father even though they don't remember him. Dís doesn't want to talk about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Father

Fíli and Kíli never knew their father well.

Fíli had a memory. Eight years old and the light in the house gold and flickering. Chin resting on the table and shoulders by his ears, boots kicking, dangling over the dirt floor. His ma rubbing his back and passing him by, a warm breeze and a coppery scent in her wake. His eyes watching someone by the fire humming over the dwindling whines of a child--Kíli. Someone humming something tuneless, not like Ma would sing at night. His voice was wordless rumble and he swayed to an unrelated rhythm. His long densely braided hair matched the gold light in the room. Fíli knew it must have matched, but all he really remembered was the humming and gentle swaying, and Kíli's voice fading, the whole room disappearing into that soothing static hum.

No one ever told him he looked like his father, but he knew that he did. His ma, Kíli, Thorin, they all looked alike, and they said, often, how Kíli was the spitting image of their grandfather when he was young. So where did Fíli come from, then?

He came from that sway and hum, and when he closed his eyes tight enough, he could see that room again and feel the warm light shining on his face. And he could convince himself he saw that light reflecting off wavy, coppery hair falling on a broad back. But try as he might (and he did, when he was younger, his face hot from his frustration and the light), he could never make his memory turn around, and he never got to see his memory's face.

*

Kíli used to ask about him. He didn't understand why no one ever answered.

If Fíli knew anything, he wouldn't share it. Kíli, as the youngest, hated when the grown-ups kept secrets from him, especially when even Fíli knew something he didn't.

So he asked his ma one morning. They were taking the laundry down to the creek, his ma carrying a basket filled with soiled clothes and he with a washing bat dragging behind him.

He was angry. Fíli had left with Dwalin after breakfast to practice his fighting. Sometimes, Dwalin and his ma let Kíli come along, too, to watch and maybe learn something from that, like Dwalin said. But this morning, his ma told him she needed him home; she had too much to do and she needed to go to the forge in the afternoon. She needed his help to get everything done.

He knew Fíli would tell him everything about his day, later. About everything Dwalin taught him and everything he could do now that Kíli couldn't. It wasn't fair, he thought, just because Fíli was a little bit older than he was, he got to do everything while Kíli got stuck home with his ma. By the time they said Kíli was old enough to learn, Dwalin might have even left the Blue Mountains, like Thorin had. Or like his da.

"Ma," he said, trailing several steps behind her, dragging his toes.

"Yes, jewel?"

He looked up and watched his ma's black hair swing back and forth and her braids bounce on her back. "When is Da coming back?"

He saw her step stutter. "What's that?"

"Da," he said, louder. "When is he coming back?"

His ma kept walking and still didn't answer.

Kíli's face felt hot. She thought he was too little to know. She didn't ever want to tell him important things. "Did he go to find work like Thorin did? He’s been gone a long time. Will he come back to teach me how to fight? If Dwalin goes?"

"He’s not going to come back," she said. "Kíli, can we talk about this later?"

"Why not? You said Thorin was going to come back."

"Thorin is going to come back. He'll be home in the winter."

"Then why won’t Da come back?"

"I don't know."

They had come up on the creek, now, and his ma put the laundry basket down on the banks and began to roll up her sleeves.

Kíli knocked against the rocks by the creek with the washing bat until his ma yelled at him to stop before he dented it up. She took the bat out of his hands and handed him one of Fíli's shirts to wash.

"Why doesn't Fíli have to help?"

"You know why."

Kíli thought about dropping the shirt and letting it float away in the creek, but he knew his ma would be furious, and then when Fíli found out, he would probably hold Kíli's head in the wash bucket again. So he just rubbed it hard as he could on the rocks at the edge of the creek while his fingers went numb in the cold water.

"Why were you thinking about your father?" his ma asked quietly.

Kíli shrugged. His face was going red and he didn't know why.

"Do you think about him a lot?"

He shrugged again. "Everyone acts like it's a secret. Everyone remembers but me."

"Well." His ma draped a wet shirt over the rocky shore and struck it with the washing bat. "It's not a secret. There's just nothing to say. He was here, and now he's gone. That's all." She wiped her forehead with her wet hand.

Kíli had stopped even pretending to wash Fíli's shirt and watched her. She was broad and strong; she swung the washing bat like a hammer in the forge.

"But why did he go?"

"You would have to ask him. Keep washing, please, we have a lot more to do." She paused. "I can't tell you why your father left or what he's doing now, not because I don't want to, but because I don't know." Her mouth twisted and she looked up over his head. "It might not seem like it now, but I think it was a good thing he left. In many ways. He wasn't like us. Like you and me and Fíli and Thorin and even Balin and Dwalin. We're different from most dwarves. You know that." Her eyes met his, then, dark blue and narrow, serious.

"We're of Durin's House," he said, reciting words he'd known as long as he could talk. "Thorin is King Under the Mountain and we're the living heirs of Durin's line."

"The only living heirs," his ma said. "And your father was not of our line. Your father, I think, never understood who I am. Who you and your brother are. You are princes." She took him by the shoulders and kissed him on the forehead. "And one day, when we return to Erebor, you'll finally be treated like one. Your father could never understand that. Your father could never be a part of that. I know that now.” Her eyes were downcast and Kíli thought she looked sad. “I will always be grateful to your father, because without him, there could never have been you and Fíli, my precious jewels, my princes. But I should never have thought he could be a part of our family. We're meant for bigger things." She picked him up and help him high in her strong arms.

"Put me down," he said, but he giggled when she held him up in the air and when she kissed him hard on each cheek.

She tossed him up once and when she put him back down, she tweaked his nose and said, "So, don't worry about him. You'll grow up bigger and stronger, kinder and wiser and more special than he ever was or ever could be. You'll slay orcs and dragons, you and your brother right beside Thorin. But in the meantime, we have a lot of laundry to do, little prince."

*

One day she came home to an empty house with the cracks in the windows whistling. The lamps were still burning and when she opened the door, she knew. It was still and she heard the shrill peal of the wind through the hairline cracks.

She looked for them, for her husband and her sons. She walked through the kitchen calling their names and opened all the cupboards. She went into their bedroom and looked under their beds, stripped their beds clean. She went into her and her husband's room and it was there, staring at the red quilt with gold stitching on their bed that she screamed. She yanked the quilt off the bed and ripped the sheets apart. She dragged her sword off the top of her bookshelf and tore into the mattress.

The sweat poured down the back of her neck and stung her eyes and her hair fell out of its braids in front of her face.

She tripped over the threshold and found herself outside like that, on the worn path outside her front door. She screamed his name and her sons' names. She screamed her brother's name because when she found her husband, she intended to kill him.

If she had found her brother, or if he had found her, she still believed they would have done it. They would have found him and killed him.

Instead, she heard something. Something high above her, nearly carried away by the wind.

"Ma! Ma!"

Her sword hanging down at her side, she squinted up above her into the dark leafy canopy.

"Kíli, is that you?" Her voice quivered. "Are you in that tree?"

The leaves shuddered and she heard small bodies sliding around the branches.

"Be careful. What are you doing up there?" She put her hand on the tree trunk, the tip of her sword dragging in the dirt behind her. She could hear Kíli's disproportionately big voice whispering something. Then the tree shook again and Fíli's boots dropped below the bottom branches.

"We got scared," he said, peeking out at her through the shaking limbs. It was too dark for her too see the details of his face, but she knew he was sucking his lip like he did when he was thinking. He said, finally, "I don't know where Da went. He told us not to move, but we got scared."

"Scared of what, jewel?"

"The monster," he whispered, but Dís knew what he was saying even if she didn't hear his words. They had always been scared of the monster in the dark house, the shrill sounds of the wind and long shadows from the lamps. The noises they heard at night. Of being left alone.

"So you came out here to hide from the monster?"

Fíli didn't say anything, but she knew he was nodding. He hated to admit when he was afraid. She could see him leading Kíli, tripping over his boots, out of the house by the hand, telling his little brother not to be frightened.

"You know there's no monster, Fíli. Just think of what Thorin would say if he heard you talking like that."

"But we--"

She couldn't guess what he said this time, and she made him repeat it, louder.

"We heard Da crying."

She knelt down to rest her sword in the grass. She was struggling to steady her hand, to hold in the screams that were rubbing her throat raw. "Well." She brushed her hair out of her face. "Don't worry about your father," she said. "He wasn’t crying because of a monster. There isn't any monster here except in your head." She realized her words did not sound comforting, not even to her. She struggled to think of something that would be. Fíli rarely needed comforting, not for the past three years since Kíli had been born. Before that, when he was smaller, she played hide-and-seek with him, when she was still giddy with new motherhood and he was still stumbling on his short round legs. When she found him, she'd pull him out of his hiding place and tickle him all over.

So, now, unable to think of anything else, she grabbed him by his ankles and pulled him out of the tree to the sound of Kíli's squeals. "I got you!" She held him up in front of her and kissed his forehead.

"Stop, Ma!" Fíli squirmed in her grip and she had to crouch down to keep a tight hold on him. "Why are you--" But he didn't manage to finish his sentence as Dís wiggled her fingers in his underarms and he dissolved into writhing, gasping laughter.

She wrapped her arms around him, pressed his face into her neck, and tried to disguise her sob as a laugh.

Fíli kept pushing away from her and making noises of embarrassment, but she kept her arms tight around him and whispered in his ear, "Now you can help me get your brother."

Fíli stopped punching her stomach at that suggestion and she pushed him off her lap.

Kíli had been uncharacteristically silent in the tree, but when Fíli jumped for the low limb and started pulling himself up, Dís heard her youngest squeal and the leaves shook just above where Fíli was struggling to get through the branches.

She took a deep breath and forced it out as a laugh.

Kíli shrieked and Fíli yelled and the whole tree shook with their scrambling and laughter. And Dís sat down with her back against the tree trunk. Her shoulders sunk down toward her knees and she covered her face with her hands. Between her fingers, she could see her sword glinting in the spotty moonlight.

She tried to think of her husband, of the way his face looked or the sound of his voice. Of how she knew, the second she opened the door that night, that he was gone. Her heart rate increased and the sword glinted brighter. But it was like she hadn't seen him in years. Like he’d been slowly disappearing the whole time. All she could see was his back turning to her in the shadow of the fire.

She put her head between her knees while Kíli's screams grew more frequent and Fíli's laughter stopped altogether.

She put her hands over her ears to block them out, but she couldn't keep them out of her memories. Every time she listened for his words, she heard theirs, telling babbling stories about dragons or asking for more milk. Every time she looked for his face, she saw theirs, like a portrait flickering in candlelight. And her breathing quickened and her heart beat wildly.

As desperately as she searched for her life outside of them, she couldn't find it. And Kíli's scream hit a high crescendo and Fíli's voice broke through her attempts to ignore them. "Ma! Kíli's stuck."

She raised her head just enough to say, "What?"

And Fíli said, "At the top of the tree. He says he can't move. Cos of the wind."

"Well." She straightened against the tree trunk and looked up through the dense branches. "Can you get to him?" She could see the shapes of Fíli's boots and braids flashing between dark waving leaves.

"Kíli, come down." She could just hear Fíli, using his deepest most authoritative voice, over the wind.

She could hear flashes of his voice in that. Not the sound, not yet, but the intent. She could see, already, that Fíli would remind her of him. She heard twigs breaking under him and the protracted whine of branches as he pulled himself higher up.

She thought of the treetops pushed over by the wind and her youngest clinging to the splintering trunk, her oldest adding stress to the thin tip with every inch he climbed.

She held her breath. She listened for the long creak and the short snap.

Then the wind died down, and in the momentary lull, she heard instead Kíli's whimpering cries and Fíli's voice, low and patient, trying to coax him down. And the same creeping creak under Fíli's boots, maybe him on his tiptoes, straining up to reach Kíli, too scared to move.

She listened, and she listened, and then something hard lurched in her chest and she struggled upright, calling, "Fíli!"

"Don't climb any higher," she said, gripping the tree trunk in both hands and peering hard up through the dark tangled limbs. "You'll put too much weight on the top of the tree."

"But Kíli--"

"Just do as I say. Kíli, if you climbed up there, you can climb back down. Fíli, if you watch him, you can tell him where to put his feet. Kíli, you have to trust your brother and do as he tells you. Do you both understand?"

She heard Fíli say he did, but Kíli, she couldn't be sure. "Fíli, does your brother understand? Can you explain to him?"

"Yes." And she could hear his voice, indistinct, quieter, coaching Kíli down. The wind picked back up and then she didn't even hear that. She stayed at the bottom of the tree, staring into the shaking darkness, staring until she saw their shadowy shapes approaching her, staring until she could reach out and grab her youngest out of the low branches and hold his small body and wet face against her, until she could take Fíli's hand and help him jump down, and fall down on her knees with them both in her arms, until she put Kíli on her hip and took Fíli by his elbow and brought them both home and put blankets around their shoulders in front of the fire.

It took a long time, a lot of singing and bouncing on her knee to make Kíli stop trembling--she was glad, in that moment, that no one else was there to see them--and Fíli sat quietly not taking his eyes off the fire for too long. Longer than she had ever seen him sit still before.

That night she slept in their room with them, one boy on each side, Kíli tucked close into her ribs and under her arm, and Fíli further away, his back to her. She hoped Kíli was too young to remember it later. She hoped Fíli would learn to forget. She just hoped she would be strong. She thought of her sword, where she’d left it, glittering below the tree in the moonlight.


End file.
